Estates in Bloomsbury

1 Duke of Bedford
2 City of London Corporation
3 Capper Mortimer
4 Fitzroy (Duke of Grafton)
5 Somers
6 Skinners' (Tonbridge)
7 Battle Bridge
8 Lucas
9 Harrison
10 Foundling Hospital
11 Rugby
12 Bedford Charity (Harpur)
13 Doughty
14 Gray's Inn
15 Bainbridge–Dyott (Rookeries)

Area between the Foundling and Harrison estates: Church land

Grey areas: fragmented ownership and haphazard development; already built up by 1800

About the Bedford Charity (Harpur) Estate

The Bedford Charity, also known as the Harpur Trust, was founded in the sixteenth century by Sir William Harpur, for the benefit of a school he had helped to found in Bedford (www.bedfordcharity.org.uk)

The original 13-acre site in the east of Bloomsbury which formed part of the original endowment is now reduced to a mere 3 acres, but is still worth millions (Shirley Green, Who Owns London?, 1986)

The original estate encompasses a crooked area south of the Rugby estate and north and east of Red Lion Square, including the southern half of what is now Lamb’s Conduit Street but was known as Red Lion Street until the late eighteenth century

Its proximity to already-developed areas to the south and east of Bloomsbury, including the legal centre of Gray’s Inn, meant that it was developed residentially much earlier than the western and northern areas of Bloomsbury, beginning in 1686

Much of the development was carried out by unscrupulous builder Nicholas Barbon, who built houses all over the Red Lion Fields area without necessarily obtaining the permission of the legal owner first (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

The Trust continues to own freeholds in Dombey Street, Bedford Row, New North Street, Sandland Street, Red Lion Street, and Theobald’s Road; it also invested in property in Eagle Street, outside the original estate boundaries, as a “vote of confidence in the present Estate’s future” (Shirley Green, Who Owns London?, 1986)

Bedford Court

Not to be confused with numerous other Bedford Courts in London, or with Harpur Mews, which (along with the passageway leading to it) seems to have been known as Bedford Court during the late eighteenth century

It was a short passageway running west through a gateway off New North Street; its name and its location suggest it was just within the Bedford charity estate

It was also connected for a while to Horse and Groom Yard to its south

It was developed in the late eighteenth century; there is no sign of it on Rocque’s map of 1746, but it was probably developed by 1799, as it appears on Horwood’s map of that date

The 1841 census lists its residents as a typical small back street mixture of cabmen and wheelwrights, coach trimmers and smiths, wood cutters and cabinet makers, along with a sizeable population of tailors, milliners, and other garment and boot makers, painters, bookbinders, a printer, a governess, and a solicitor

No. 1 was particularly crowded in 1841, with 47 occupants, including an Irish family, but the other properties were not so crowded